Informational needs in science and technology

/

Number 33 Price, 20 cents

^ Reprint and Circular Series

OF THE

National Research
Council

INFORMATIONAL NEEDS IN SCIENCE
AND technology

By Charles L. Reese
Chemical Director, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company

NOV i;?

LIBRARY

An address delivered before the Annual Meeting of the American Chemical Society,
Birmingham, Alabama, April 3, 1922.

Published in Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry,
AT;)v lO-;^^ Vol M \'n .">. page 304.

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REPRINT AND CIRCULAR SERIES

OF THE

National Research Council

NUMBER 33

Informational Needs in Science and
Technology

By Charles L. Reese

THERE is a common saying that "Knowledge is Power."
Information and knowledge are so closely related that it
might be said that information is power, and coordinated
information is power plus. The rapid rate at which knowledge
has been and is being accumulated, particularly in science and
technology, is brought out very forcibly by the Polish engineer
Korzybski in his remarkable book, "Manhood of Humanity,"
and it seems that extraordinary steps must be taken to coordi-
nate and correlate information in such a way as to make it
available to all capable of using it throughout the world.

Efficiency in research and in the application of its results is
significantly conditioned by command of information. To
the individual, nation, or race which most skilfully, thoroughly,
and wisely masters and uses the accumulated knowledge of
mankind comes supremacy in industry, if not also in science,
politics, and art. Creators of knowledge through the appli-
cation of scientific method to Nature are prone to belittle or
to ignore the devices by which information is conserved, rendered
conveniently accessible, and disseminated. Rather it becomes
us to inquire whether by giving systematic attention to means
of marshaling and using what has been discovered, invented,
felt, imagined, constructed, we may not render uniquely valuable
service to civilization.

Time was when knowledge was transmitted from man to man
or generation to generation either orally or by rude products
of human labor. Then came written language and, finally,
printing, libraries, and the construction of such keys to knowl-
edge as catalogs, indexes, handbooks, encyclopedias. All the
while the rate of accession to information has increased rapidly,
although irregularly. Man has become increasingly a thinking
animal with remarkable development of curiosity, resource-
fulness, originality, breadth of interest and view, foresight,
disinterestedness, and sympathy. With multitudes of indi-
viduals and generations feverishly active, often progressive,

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all striving to live more comfortably, happily, usefully and longer,
and to command Nature more successfully to these ends, what
are the chances that my present idea, thought, or plan is new —
shall we say one in a million? It requires but scant attention
to the matter to convince us that the eflBciency of our use of the
products of human thought and of its records is astoundingly
low. We chemists are continuously repeating not only mental
processes but, as well, the experimental procedures of our pred-
ecessors in research. Within limits this duplication of labor
is desirable and profitable, but how far we fall short of utilizing
as we should the constructive efforts of those unnumbered
generations of men and women whose lives prepared the way
for ours.

The progress of discovery and invention has nearly eliminated
space as a barrier between individuals and peoples. Time, it
has been compressed. The output of carefully recorded infor-
mation is to-day overwhelmingly large — the world is producing
millions of printed, typed and written pages of records of re-
search, invention, development, and practical experience, not to
mention cultural and esthetic creations. This amazing increase
in the quantity of human knowledge is accompanied by cor-
responding increase in specialization of interest, occupation,
and terminology. Tongues also have multipUed, and mental
patterns, human needs, and demands have become more
diverse. In general, as knowledge has increased, the devices
for handling it have become less satisfactory. Few needs are
now clearer or more urgent than the construction of efficient
informational mechanisms or keys to knowledge. The question
I present to you is, "How may the constructive agencies in science
and industry help to bring about the designing and installation
of suitable informational mechanisms?" May we not profit-
ably bring our scientific method, habit of mind, purpose, and
need to bear on this important problem with a view to devising
informational master-keys which shall render human knowledge
many times more available and, therefore, more valuable?

It is obvious that knowledge, even in a relatively narrow field,
has outgrown the capacity of most individuals. However en-
cyclopedic we may be by nature or training, we can master only
certain fragments of the information which mankind has accu-
mulated. It is conceivable, however, that we should be able
to construct an informational system which would enable every
reasonably intelligent and fairly well-educated person to obtain
the essential information about a given subject when needed.
Why should we not handle the packing, storage, shipping, and
distribution of knowledge as efficiently as we manage commercial
production? We have gradually devised a system of exchange,
national and international, which with reasonable satisfactori-
ness enables us to enjoy the products of others' skill and industry.
Such systems are imperfect, but by comparison with present
modes of preserving information and rendering it accessible to
posterity, they are highly advanced.

Largely because knowledge is discontinuous and relatively

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unavailable, history repeats itself endlessly and tragically. Ignor-
ance, it would appear, is responsible for more catastrophes and
racial setbacks than are carelessness, selfishness, and malicious-
ness combined. The solemn duty rests on us to devise ade-
quate ways and means of carrying forward always, with con-
tinuously increasing accessibility, the sum of useful knowledge
and experience. The fact that the task has not been done is
good evidence of its difBcultness, not of its impossibility or
its lack of importance.

Developments duri.vg the War
The World War at once revealed some of the weaknesses of
our informational position and our ability to remedy them.
When the tremendous need for munitions and men came we
were plodding along self-satisfied and generally oblivious of the
fact that we commanded relatively little information. Almost
over night, investigators and industries became aware that
knowledge of conditions, discovery, invention, production — in a
word, efficiency of effort was lacking. Intelligence bureaus, in-
formational departments, staffs of abstractors, indexers, compilers,
and purveyors appeared suddenly all over the country. What
Germany had at hand in 1914, because of her superior foresight
and appreciation of the supreme value of systematized available
knowledge and of the indispensablene.ss of research, we were
compelled to try to create at high speed and with feverish haste.
It is enlightening to examine some of our information-seeking
activities in their relation to our present need and opportunity.
COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES — My own company, when it under-
took a number of new lines of manufacture, beginning during
the latter days of the war, recognized the need of more extensive
and more comprehensive information along these lines. An
Intelligence Division was therefore organized, charged with the
collection, integration, and dissemination of technical information
on the subjects in which we were interested. At the time of
its maximum activity this Division was spending $80,000 per
year for salaries alone, and comprised a personnel of thirty-five
men and women.

A classified index of the dye patents of the United States was
prepared ; foundations were laid for a general information catalog,
which, while no longer being added to at the present time, is
still a valuable library tool; an information index of our research
reports was started and is just being completed; a librar>' was
organized, etc. While many of the activities of the Division
probably were of interest only to the du Pont Company, it is
unquestionably true that some of the activities could better
have been carried on by some organization like the Research
Information Service of the National Research Council, and the
results would then have been available to the country at large.
For more than five years the Chemical Catalog Company
has conducted an information bureau for the benefit of chemical
industn.' and its personnel. Informational demands increased
so considerably that it was found desirable in 1921 to place this
bureau on a charge basis. A fee of $25 per year is now charged

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to firms or individuals who wish to command the service. This
also, it should be noted, is a highly specialized service limited to
chemical technology and making no special provision for informa-
tion concerning research.

The National Industrial Conference Board, organized and
maintained by the industries of the country, is one of the most
active and efficient intelligence agencies in the country. Their
activities are mostly along industrial, social, and economic lines,
and they have made since 1917 forty-five research reports and
twenty special reports as a result of studies on such subjects
as changes in cost of living, strikes, works councils, profit sharing,
health service in industry, taxes, hours of labor, and metric
versus English system of weights and measures. All of these
are the results of the collection of statistics and the presenta-
tion of facts.

These instances of informational activities directed toward
increasing the availability of commercially valuable information
are typical of what has been achieved or attempted for various
industries throughout the United States since 1917. Many of
the informational bureaus which sprang up by reason of war
needs have been abandoned because of economic pressure.
Others are struggling to achieve self-support and profit. The
indications are clear, however, that a general informational
clearing house should be an endowed public service organization,
independent alike of the need of self-support and of gain.

GOVERNMENTAL WORK — Of governmental informational activi-
ties certain notable instances should be mentioned. The Food
Administration perfected a staff and statistical machinery
which provided it with unprecedentedly complete intelligence
concerning food production, distribution, consmnption, waste,
and prices. The statistical department of the Food Adminis-
tration, as was generally recognized during the war and has
since been made clear by its reports, functioned with marvelous
efficiency as an intelligence agency.

With a view to enabling the Federal Government to command
such available information as was essential for wise action, a
central bureau for planning and statistics was organized and,
at the height of the need, operated for several months. But
as soon as the need began to diminish this admirable idea and
its initial expression were abandoned. Thus was once more
exemplified the general inability to appreciate the importance
of providing organization and apparatus to make human knowl-
edge readily available.

In the Army and the Navy, intelligence services, with the
advent of war, emerged from dark corners and spread knowledge-
seeking tentacles throughout the world. Rapidly these military
bureaus evolved systems of gathering, classifying, and distribut-
ing information of essential importance to a nation at war.
For a time the military departments were immersed in positive
and negative intelligence, much of which doubtless was generally
available to enemies as well as allies. Probably it will require
years for these protective and defensive intelligence services to

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sink again into that oblivion which ignorance of world conditions
tends to encourage. Seemingly, the more ignorant a nation,
the safer it feels; and certainly the more ignorant an individual
the less he appreciates the possible values of knowledge and of
instrumentalities for commanding it.

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL — Last, bccausc it is first in
our interest as investigators, mention may be made of the in-
formational work of the National Research Council. This was
begun while the Council served as the Department of Science
and Research of the National Council for Defense. At first
there was organized a Research Information Committee with
headquarters in Washington, and offices in London, Paris, and
Rome. The principal and important function of this committee
was to gather information about current research of military
significance and to distribute reports of such work to appropriate
military and civilian agencies. The committee served, through
its staff of scientific directors or attaches, primarily as an informa-
tion gathering and disseminating agency. Its success led to
subsequent reorganization as the Research Information Service,
concerning which more will be said later.

The various informational activities which have been selected
as examples of types are all of them indicative of the need and
opportunity which, compelling during the Great War, are always
with us and are far more worthy of serious study and effort than
is generally reahzed.

The World Situation

It has already been hinted that there was rare appreciation
of the importance of human knowledge during the war and that
we already are tending to lose this appreciation. With this
observation in mind, it may prove worth while to make a hasty
survey of the world situation.

GERMANY — Germany has the instrumentality for command-
ing scientific and technological information and for stimulation
and guidance of research effort which all but gave her victory.
This instrumentality, whose principal locus is Grosslichterfelde,
includes the great national laboratories and the informational
bureau which has quite naturally, but by no means accidentally,
grown up in connection with "das konigliche Materialprufung-
samt." The purpose of this institution, which was organized
at Charlottenburg in 1871 and in 1904 moved to its present site,
is to place at the service of the German people a staff of thoroughly
competent specialists, armed with all technical facilities and
records of human progress. This staff holds itself at the command
of investigators, inventors, manufacturers, technologists, agri-
culturists, to assist in the solution of their practical problems
and to help them to command the accumulated knowledge and
progress of the whole world. This institution is said to have
claimed to be able to answer 80 per cent of the problems put up
to them supposedly demanding experimental research.

We may not reasonably flatter ourselves with the thought
that we are exceptionally advanced in our consideration of in-

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formational needs and opportunities, for the chances are that in
Germany, Japan, and probably other countries as well, plans
have already been formulated, and possibly are well advanced
toward practical expression, for the effective command of world
informational resources in the interest of national development
and prosperity. But whatever we do toward improving our
informational resources, we can least of all afford to forget that
as a nation we are backward in supporting, dignifying, and so
far recognizing the values of constructive work that it necessarily
commands the respect, attention, and confidence of our people,
and is regarded as essential to human progress.

Yet, Germany does not stand alone in appreciation of informa-
tional need or in determined effort to meet it. England, years
ago, was chief mover and responsible agency in the organization
of the International Catalog of Scientific Literature, an ambitious
project which ultimately failed because it was modeled too closely
after the librarian's ideal of an index to knowledge. The Catalog,
although undeniably useful as a list of all scientific publications,
did not prove satisfactory to investigators and consequently
failed to command their support. Its fate points a lesson which
it is hoped we may heed, namely, that a mere catalog of titles
is an entirely inadequate key to human knowledge. It demands
supplementation, transformation, or both.

BELGIUM — Belgium also has witnessed an attempt to list
and partly to summarize all published documents. In effect,
this amounts to the construction of a classified card catalog to
which one might turn with reasonable expectation of getting
useful references or suggestions concerning almost any topic
of human interest. This project also has suffered the ills of
war and is moribimd. We well may ask whether the plan was
wisely conceived and whether, however thoroughly it may be
carried out, it can reasonably be expected to meet our principal
informational needs.

As has already been indicated, America, although full of in-
formational agencies — industrial, scientific, political — has no
general informational clearing house for all interests. Special
informational bureaus or intelligence services come and go so
rapidly that a directory cannot be kept to date. Washington
is crowded with invaluable sources of information covering the
entire range of human interests and activities. There are scores
of federal offices, bureaus, divisions, departrrients which command
useful information; but there is no individual and no bureau
which serves as guide or directory. Consequently, the search
for information in the great national center of intelligence is
likely to prove baffling, discouraging, and, at worst, irritating.
What could readily be done for informational Washington by
the creation of a central clearing house, what indeed already has
been attempted for quite another purpose by the Bureau of
Efficiency, certainly should be done at once and with the greatest
human foresight and skill for our entire country, for the world,
because the isolated or independent nation is a fiction, and for
the whole of human knowledge, historical as well as current.

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Nowhere in the world, so far as present information indicates,
is there in plan or operation an informational clearing house
conceived on a large scale with intent to render the whole range
of human information increasingly accessible and useful. It
is precisely such an informational organization that our times,
our industries, our investigators, our public institutions, our
public servants, and our people need. The realization of need
in most quarters is not yet compelling, but in others it is def-
initely sensed and it is believed that the time is ripe boldly to
extend the plans of the Research Information Service of the
National Research Council.

Research Information Service, National Research
Council

From the Research Council's committee on research informa-
tion, following the Armistice, was organized a division of the
permanent Council called the "Research Information Service."
It was my pleasure and responsibility to assist in planning,
organizing, and furthering this informational agency. The
Service has now been available for three years. During the
first two years attention was centered on the study of the informa-
tional situation, the formulation of plans, and the creation of
fundamental informational tools. From three years of effort
to discover, understand, and satisfy informational demands,
certain principles of organization and policy have appeared.
These have been carefully considered by an organizing com-
mittee which is representative of research interests and of the
principal industries and types of informational agency of the
country. Foremost among the principles agreed upon by this
committee on organization are the following:

1 — The desirability of developing initially a general clearing
house for scientific and technological information rather than
a mere storehouse or depository of knowledge.

2 — The conduct of a free informational service for the pro-
motion of research, useful applications of its results and the
supplying or disseminating of knowledge necessary for or bene-
ficial to human welfare and progress. It is recognized by the
committee that there is a practical limit to the possibility of
free ser\'ice beyond which charge sufTicient to cover the cost of
service should be made.

3 — The encouragement and fostering of a miscellaneous re-
quest service initially limited to scientific and technological
knowledge which shall strive to supply reliable information
concerning any aspect or relations of research. Especially to
be mentioned in this connection is information concerning re-
search problems, projects, methods, processes, results, current
work, laboratories, equipment, apparatus, funds, and other
means of support, persons engaged in constructive or creative
work, publications, and bibliographies.

4 — The primary task of the special stafT of the Research In-
formation Service is set forth as the designing and construction
of informational keys, instruments or tools essential to the
efficient functioning of a clearing house for human knowledge.
The final purpose in endeavoring to create informational instru-
ments is the development of a complete coordinated machinery
for gathering, classifying, locating when needed, and disseminat-
ing trustworthy information.

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5 — Utilization by the Service of correspondence, informational
publications, and publicity as ways of meeting the informational
needs of organizations and individuals, and of educating the
public to appreciation of the possible values of a carefully planned
and efficiently conducted informational clearing house.

The group of men, among whom appear several of our chemical
colleagues, which has been chiefly responsible for the launching
and development of this project naturally has come to look
upon it as America's most ambitious, most thoughtful, and
most promising attempt to be useful in a large way and perma-
nently in connection with the handling of the varied and multi-
tudinous products of human thought and ingenuity. Dr. James
R. Angell, first chairman of the post bellum Research Council,
once characterized the painstaking, albeit somewhat discourag-
ing, labors of the Research Information Service Committee as
primarily an "investment in brains." He believed firmly in
the wisdom of this investment and in the supreme importance
of the Council's informational opportunity.

To repeat, even casual observation serves to indicate the
scattered and special character of sources of knowledge and
the extreme improbability that a needy individual will happen
upon the right source. It is only by happy accident that one
locates satisfactory information outside the field of his special
interest and activity. There is neither correlation nor coordi-
nation; there is not even a central medium of communication
to place those who desire information in touch with those who
have it. It is proposed, therefore, to make the Research In-
formation Service of the National Research Council a great
clearing house for informational requests and thus to increase
the availability and value of existing sources and to supplement
them as necessary. The Service will not strive for encyclopedic
knowledge, save of sources, but undoubtedly its files will gradually
acquire value. Ultimately it may become a great informational
center, as well as clearing house.

Although at present the Service is rather strictly limiting its
activities to the natural sciences and their practical applications
in industry and engineering, it is proposed to direct its develop-
ment along those lines which promise to promote both increase
of human knowledge through constructive effort and improved
availability of knowledge already achieved. Once suitable
clearing-house machinery has been designed, constructed, and
perfected, there is no obvious reason why the plan which has
been outlined should not be applied to the entirety of human
knowledge.

Although it is commonly believed that the important prod-
ucts of human skill and labor are satisfactorily transmitted
from generation to generation it is important to note that this
is not true of those products of mental labor which gain expres-
sion merely in written language. Useful inventions, commer-
cially developed, are not likely to be lost except by replacement,
but verbal descriptions of discoveries or inventions which have
not achieved material expression are very likely to become
buried in our great informational storehouse, our libraries. In

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the light of this condition, it has seemed peculiarly important
to develop an informational service to supplement the library.
This evidently means new types of keys to knowledge. The
staff of the Information Service has planned and begun to de-
velop files for research personnel, problems, results, laboratories,
methods, procedures, experimental equipment, and bibliogra-
phies. It is surprisingly easy in this kind of venture to design
special equipment which cannot be operated successfully be-
cause of its needless complexity, size, or costliness. The tendency
is always toward specialization and against the creation of effi-
cient clearing-house machinery.

It is now pretty generally recognized that the first and most
important step toward increased availability of information
should be the preparation of reliable objective, analytical ab-
stracts of literature, and the construction of detailed subject
indexes. If the scientific and technological literature of the
world were regularly and systematically abstracted and listed,
and if all this condensed information were available in the Re-
search Information Service, it is reasonable to anticipate that
from 70 to 90 per cent of all requests could be answered directly
and with reasonable satisfactoriness from this single master-
key. Were this proposed key to published materials supple-
mented by files of records concerning current research, scientific
and technological workers, laboratories — their construction,
equipment, etc., it is certain that many more requests could
be successfully answered.

The Service has imdertaken to develop, as its fundamental
tools, first, a list of informational sources including individuals
as well as organizations, specialists as well as informational
bureaus; second, it is building up a library of source books which
it is hoped may ultimately become an invaluable master-key
to published information. Scarcely less important than these
two types of key for clearing house use is the research personnel
file which is counted upon to supply reliable information con-
cerning all research workers, their resources for research, their
interests, and their principal lines of activity. This file already
contains nearly 14,000 names and is being mechanized by the
use of the Findex system for convenience and accuracy of sorting.
It is cited merely as an example of a type of master-key which,
if skilfully planned and efficiently developed, an informational
clearing house is sure to find entirely essential and of steadily
increasing value.

As is true in many other directions, the best way to appreciate
the problems of an information service, its need, and the value
of devices for meeting tbem, is to try to use the Service and to
follow as closely as may be the functioning of the clearing-house
mechanisms in supplying information.

American chemists are far better situated informationally
than are most other groups of scientists or technologists. Simi-
larly, the chemical industries have been conspicuously more
progressive in their efforts to command .scientific and technologi-
cal information than have other commercial interests. To

(9.)

what extent this is due to the necessity created by German
initiative and resourcefulness is difficult to determine, but cer-
tainly the German influence has been considerable. And with
all its provisions for marshaling and promptly commanding
pertinent information, it is clear that American chemistry is
not in the strongest possible position and that it still nmst reckon
with species of ignorance and forms of competition which are
as inimical to national welfare as they are to professional prog-
ress. It is entirely fair to ask, "Would not systematic, sus-
tained, intelligent study of informational needs and values be
likely to result in great improvement for chemistry?" My
own observations and experience in connection with our Chem-
ical Intelligence Department indicate an affirmative reply.

Chemistry and chemists, as well as those who as laymen seek
chemical information, undoubtedly can profit greatly by a wisely
planned and efficiently conducted general informational clearing
house. We especially need such a service to facilitate contacts
with related fields of research and with discoveries, inventions,
and developments which, although not chemical, have signifi-
cance for our special interests. We need such a general clearing
house also to increase our profitable contacts with the consuming
public. We need it to supplement our own keys to chemical
literature, our abstracts, indexes, compilations of information,
and even our special informational agencies, such as the Chem-
ical Catalog Company, for through the sort of national informa-
tional clearing house which the Research Council is undertaking
to create our special informational aids in chemistry will be made
available to untold millions of scientists, industrialists, and con-
sumers of chemical products.

It is greatly to be desired that ultimately an international
service of this character be established with not a single locus,
but with branches in most of the important countries, containing
on file in each all of the material collected, so that in case of a
cataclysm such as has befallen Russia and which might have
befallen all of Europe if the World War had lasted much longer,
it would not result in the loss to the world of a large part of her
wealth of information. Such an arrangement if it were possible
would require governmental cooperation but would result in a
tremendous saving of eflfort and be all-embracing.

The Research Information Service of the National Research
Council is a public service agency. It is ours to make or to mar,
to use or neglect. It urgently invites our cooperation and freely
offers its aid to us individually and collectively. We cannot
afford to do less than interest ourselves intelligently in this
difficult undertaking whose possibilities of usefulness are almost
limitless and to endeavor to aid in so directing its further de-
velopment that it may command our support increasingly.

Before closing I wish to call attention to the valuable results
already accomplished by the Research Information Service of
the National Research Council, due to the untiring and invaluable
efforts of Chairman Robert M. Yerkes, at whose suggestion
this paper was prepared.

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Reprint and Circular Series of the National
Research Council

Number 1. Report of the Patent Committee of the National Research Council. Presented for the
Committee by L. H. Baekeland, Acting Chairman. February, 1919. Pages 24. Price 30 cents.

Number 2. Report of the Psychology Committee of the National Research Council. Presented for
the Committee by Robert M. Yerkes, Chairman. March, 1919. Pages 51. Price 60 cents.

Number 3. Refractory materials as a field for research. By Edward W. Washburn. January, 1919.
Pages 24. Price 30 cents.

Number 4. Industrial research. By F. B. Jewett. 1918. Pages 16. Price 25 cents.

Number 5. Some problems of sidereal astronomy. By Henry N. Russell. October, 1919. Pages 26.
Price 30 cents.

Number 6. The development of research in the United States. By James Rowland Angell. Novem-
ber, 1919. Pages 13. Price 25 cents.

Number 7. The larger opportunities for research on the relations of solar and terrestrial radiation.
By C. G. Abbot. February, 1920. Pages 14. Price 20 cents.

Number 8. Science and the industries. By John J. Carty. February, 1920. Pages 16. Price
25 cents.

Number 9. A reading list on scientific and industrial research and the service of the chemist to industry.
By Clarence Jay West. April, 1920. Pages 45. Price 50 cents.

Number 10. Report on organization of the International Astronomical Union. Presented for the
American Section, International Astronomical Union, by W. W. Campbell, Chairman, and
Joel Stebbins, Secretary. June, 1920. Pages 48. Price 50 cents.

Number 11. A survey of research problems in geophysics. Prepared by Chairmen of Sections of the
American Geophysical Union. October, 1920. Pages 57. Price 60 cents.

Number 12. Doctorates conferred in the sciences by American universities in 1920. Compiled by
Callie Hull. November, 1920- Pages 9. Price 20 cents.

Number 13. Research problems in colloid chemistry. By Wilder D. Bancroft. January-April, 1921.
Pages 54. Price .50 cents.

Number 14. The relation of pure science to industrial research. By John J. Carty. October, 1916.
Pages 16. Price 20 cents.

Number 15. Researches on modern brisant nitro explosives. By C. F. van Duin and B. C. Roeters
van Lennep. Translated by Charles E. Munroe. February, 1920. Pages 35. Price 50 cents.

Number 16. The reserves of the Chemical Warfare Service. By Charles H. Herty. February, 1921.
Pages 17. Price 25 cents.

Number 17. Geology and geography in the United States. By Edward B. Mathews and Homer P.
Little. April, 1921. Pages 22. Price 20 cents.

Number 18. Industrial benefits of research. By Charles L. Reese and A. J. Wadhams. February,
1921. Pages 14. Price 25 cents.

Number 19. The university and research. By Vernon Kellogg. June, 1921. Pages 10. Price

15 cents.
Number 20. Libraries in the District of Columbia. Compiled by W. I. Swanton in cooperation

with the Research Information vService of the National Research Council and Special Libraries.

June, 1921 Pages 19. Price 25 cents.
Number 21. Scientific abstracting. By Gordon S. Fulcher. September, 1921. Pages 15. Price

20 cents.
Number 22. The National Research Council. Its services for mining and metallurgy. By Alfred

D. Flinn. October, 1921. Pages 7. Price 20 cents.
Number 23. American Research chemicals. By Clarence J. West. September, 1921. Pages 28.

Price 50 cents.
Number 24. Organomagnesium compounds in synthetic chemistry: a bibliography of the Grignard

reaction 1900-1921. By Clarence J. West. Henry Gilman (In press.)
Number 25. A partial list of the publications of the National Research Council to January 1, 1922.

February. 1922. Pages 15. Price 25 cents.
Number 26. Doctorates conferred in the sciences by American universities in 1921. Compiled by

Callie Hull and Clarence J. West. (In press.)
Number 27. List of manuscript bibliographies in geology and geography. Compiled by Homer P.

Little. February, 1922. Pages 17. Price 25 cents.
Number 28. Investment in chemical education in the United States. By Clarence J. West and

Callie Hull. March, 1922. Pages 3. Price 15 cents.
Number 29. Distribution of graduate fellowships and scholarships between the arts and sciences.

By Callie Hull and Clarence J. West. (In press.)
Number 30. The first report of the committee on contact catalysis. By William D. Bancroft and

other members of the committee. (In press.)
Number 31. The status of "clinical" psychology. By F. L Wells. May, 1922. Pages 10. Price

20 cents.
Number 32. Moment.-! and stresses in slabs. By H. M. Westergaard and W. A. Slater. April,

1922. Pages 124. Price $1.00.
Number 33. Informational needs in science and technology. By Charles L. Reese. Pages 10.

Price 20 cents.